In 1998 earned MSc in System Engineering (presented thesis “Information modeling for thematic cartography projects”). 1997–2001 took part in projects of the Atlas of Eastern Lithuania and the National Atlas of Lithuania, cartography for the National Encyclopedia of Lithuania, and other thematic cartography projects. Was a member of the team, which outlined the programme of modern MSc in Cartography studies in VilniusUniversity (started in 2000).

In 2000 maintained PhD dissertation “Methodics of Informational System Design for Thematic Cartography” and became a lecturer in the Centre for Cartography, VilniusUniversity. Since 2005 associate professor in the Centre for Cartography, VilniusUniversity. Executive Secretary of Lithuanian Cartographic Society

Research interests: thematic cartography, semiotics, mathematical modelling and analysis of complex socio-cultural phenomena; system engineering; information systems; graphic design; web design.

ATLAS OF THE BALTIC SEA REGION: NEED AND OPPORTUNITIES

T. Lunden1, G. Beconyte2, M. Govorov3,

1 SödertörnUniversityCollege, SE-14189HuddingeSweden, email:

2Centre for Cartography, VilniusUniversity, M.K.Ciurlionio 21/27, LT-03101 Vilnius, Lithuania, e-mail:

3Malaspina University-College, Geography Department, 900 Fifth Street, Nanaimo, V9R 5S5, Canada, email:

Abstract

The Baltic Sea Region (BSR) has long been important in many aspects. From the ancient times it played a significant role in navigation and trade in Europe. In the Middle Ages the BSR was synonymous with the Hanseatic League. Nowadays, in the beginning of the 3rd millennium, the region has not lost its political and economic significance in the world and in Europe particularly. The BSR is the first region in the world that has adopted common regional goals for sustainable development. It is estimated that there will be a considerable increase in the number of regional geographic information strategies being implemented through the world in the next ten years. It will naturally raise interest in synthetic geographic information on the BSR, as on one of the most developed regions in the world.

Atlas of the Baltic Sea Region (ABSR) has been planned as a complex and consistent cartographic edition, containing over 400 maps, charts, texts, illustrations and other materials with a purpose to represent the region as a whole in the best way possible.

Keywords: Baltic Sea Region, atlas, thematic maps

1.Introduction

The Baltic Sea region has long been important in many aspects. From the ancient times it played a significant role in navigation and trade in Europe. In the Middle Ages the Baltic Sea region was synonymous with the Hanseatic League, an association of more than 200 cities engaged in flourishing trade, based on a fair legal system and effective organisation. Nowadays, in the beginning of the 3rd millennium, the region has not lost its political and economic significance in the world and in Europe particularly. The nine countries bordering the Baltic Sea share 14% of the territory and 5% of inhabitants of the world. They contribute to 12% of the world’s GDP and account for nearly 15% of world trade. The Baltic Sea region is the first region in the world that has adopted common regional goals for sustainable development.

The Atlas of the Baltic Sea Region is planned and described in this study as a complex and consistent cartographic edition, containing maps, charts, texts, illustrations and other materials with a purpose to represent the region as an entity in the best way possible. Performed analysis of information availability and users’ needs clearly show that societies of the region do need such atlas.

The goal of this paper is to introduce a feasibility study that encompasses:

  1. Background. In this part brief historical-geographical analysis, analysis of current situation, available information and existing cartographic representations of the Baltic Sea region are provided and the need for the proposed Atlas demonstrated. Different user’s groups and their specific needs are described and suggestions made on how these needs can be met. General difficulties and strengths (high level SWOT analysis) are described in the feasibility study.
  2. Project of ABSR. The contents of the Atlas are designed as a modular structure that allows combining units of the Atlas in the most convenient way. It has been sought for most comprehensive territorial generalization of the accumulated scientific knowledge. The structure and particular maps are planned in a way to integrate natural and socio-cultural aspects as well as history and geography of the region, to demonstrate internal territorial links and provide a macro-regional context.
  3. Description of implementation. It focuses on the breakdown of project activities and tasks that illustrates the entire framework of ABSR including time schedule. Resources (hardware, software, information, knowledge) and responsibilities of team members are assigned to each task. Modern approach to design and management of the informational system for the Atlas and modern cartographic technologies were chosen to assure efficiency of works.

2.Need for an integrated atlas

There are several reasons to design a new integrated and comprehensive thematic atlas of the Baltic Sea region.

Firstly, the region itself is interesting and attractive for many people and institutions not only inside the region, but also in the entire Europe. The Baltic Sea region is increasingly beginning to be recognized as an entity. In the past decade, and especially since the EU enlargement, the Baltic Sea region has taken significant steps towards becoming an integrated economic and political entity and a strong player in the global playing field. It has interesting and fragile natural environment. The region is attractive for tourists because of variety of its landscapes, rich cultural heritage, well developed infrastructure.

Secondly, despite the general interest, people, who live in the region or visit it with various purposes, are not sufficiently informed. Even the most of the inhabitants know very little about their neighbours on the other side of the sea. A comprehensive atlas of the region would serve as an important information source and a promotion medium.

Preliminary analysis of existing printed and digital cartographic resources shows, that none of them represent the region as an entity in more than a few of thematic aspects. Even though very detailed, reliable and up-to-date geographic information on a large number of themes, especially nature, can be found, there’s no a single comprehensive digital cartographic information system of the region. The abundant printed cartographic products are even more specialized and detached from each other. Several published atlases of the region are very narrowly specialized, the more complex atlases represent only smaller parts of the region, usually the Baltic States. Important and interesting to public issues concerning society, culture, economy and politics are generaly underrepresented. Up to now, there has been no comprehensive general atlas of the Baltic Sea Region in any country. There’s no ongoing projects, which could create such atlas.

It must be stressed that although electronic information systems and atlases can be easily updated and have many other advantages, they cannot fully replace printed atlases for several reasons:

  • On a screen, either very general map view or very small part of a complex map can be viewed. On a printed page the resolution is much higher, allowing to show many details on a relatively large area;
  • Hardware and Internet connection is needed for browsing electronic maps, which is not always convenient and still not affordable to a part of the society;
  • Even in the most technologically advanced societies, people are still used to and prefer printed maps and, especially, atlases.

3.Main target groups and their expectations

As a source of integrated information on the region The Atlas of BSR is of interest for different professional, social, demographic and regional groups of users. It is difficult to clearly distinguish between these groups because their needs and spheres of interest overlap. Still, there are three major target groups of the ABSR with their specific preferences:

  1. Spatial planners and decision makers;
  2. Business, Education and Research institutions;
  3. Individual users.

For spatial decision makers, especially at governmental institutions and regional organizations, multi-aspect geographic integration of the Atlas information is crucial. Spatial relationships, patterns and prognoses, derived from the best available data, must be effectively visualized in order to facilitate the process of spatial thinking. It is very important to show the region as a seamless entity instead of minutely representing its territorial or thematic components.

For education and general scientific information purposes the ABSR must serve as a source of up-to-date and reliable synthetic information on the region. Some themes, such as historical relationships, political situation, social and cultural tension, security, information society etc., are of interest for this large group of users, however, still underrepresented in the existing information sources.

For the individual users across Europe and the world, variety of thematic information on the region, affordability and visual attractiveness of the edition play the most important role. Preliminary survey which encompassed about 300 respondents allow asserting that ABSR printed editions would be popular not only in the Baltic Sea region countries, but also in the UK, France, Spain. Most of the respondents mentioned that editions in national languages would be more attractive. Therefore the ABSR textual database must be organized in a way allowing efficient translations.

4.Structure and contents of the Atlas

4.1Definition of the Baltic Sea region

Conception of the Baltic Sea region, which is to be represented in the Atlas, reveals integrity of the territory surrounding the Baltic Sea and its specifics compared to the other regions of the World.

The Baltic Sea is located in Northern Europe, roughly from 53°N to 67°N latitude and from 11°E to 28°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Northern Europe, Eastern Europe and Central Europe, and the Danish islands. The Baltic Sea may be delineated in several ways. The so-called Baltic proper is the water south of Åland and east of Denmark. This body of water is in constant exchange with waters around it in the north, south and east. These waters were included in the Baltic Sea convention in 1974. They are the BothnianBay, BothnianSea, the Gulf of Finland, the Gulf of Riga, the BeltSea and Kattegat. In this way the area defined in the Convention includes seven interconnected water bodies. Delineating the Baltic Sea in this way is today in common use and logically proposed for this study.

Boundaries of the Baltic Sea region are conventional and can be defined differently, depending on the purpose of analysis and the specifics of the phenomenon concerned.

4.2Thematic contents of the ABSR

The Atlas should start with general and some thematic maps of the world and Europe in order to give the reader an understanding about the place of the BSR in a larger geographic context. Then there follow several thematic parts traditionally devoted for nature, culture and society of the region. Nature, infrastructure, demographic, socio-cultural, political and economic situation of the region will be comprehensively represented in the Atlas in 7 chapters:

  1. BSR in Europe and the World;
  2. BSR and the Baltic Sea on maps
  3. Nature and landscapes
  4. Physical infrastructure
  5. People, society and culture
  6. Economy
  7. Politics

Each of the seven themes will be unfolded in several aspects:

  1. General representation within a larger context (EU, Europe, Eurasia, World).
  2. Areas and/or objects of specific interest within the theme (cities, heritage sites, characteristic territorial structures etc.).
  3. History of development, including different viewpoints.
  4. Current situation.
  5. Development plan, outlook, prognosis (where apply).

5.ABSR Project management

The goal of the project is representing different aspects of the BSR as of an entity in the form of geographic atlas featuring the most important aspects of the region.It corresponds to the following short-term objectives:

  1. Creation and maintenance of a permanent information system and digital database of the BSR.
  2. Creation and making available to public a collection of maps, compiled from the database.

In pursuit of these objectives, the following general tasks must be performed:

  1. Choice of the best international co-operation scenario for the ABSR project.
  2. Design, development and maintenance of information system and business model of the atlas.
  3. Design of thematic GIS database of the Baltic Sea region.
  4. Selection, analysis and synthesis of geographic data.
  5. Collection of additional non-geographic information.
  6. Cartographic visualization of geographic data.
  7. Design and publishing of printed atlas.

Main project activities are:

A.I.Design of the ABSR information system and business model.

A.II.Creation of the ABSR GIS database.

A.III.Detailed design of the ABSR

A.IV.Creation of ABSR non-geographic database.

A.V.Design of maps.

A.VI.Design and publishing of printed edition.

A.VII.Project management and co-ordination

Due to vast scope and complexity of the project, the team must be organized as a hierarchical flexible structure, able to efficiently manage external information sources. Principal model of the organizational structure is depicted in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Project organizational structure

It is estimated that duration of the project will be 3 years from the start of implementation, assuming that all necessary hardware, software and human resources are available. In case of sufficient financing and efficient management and avoiding unpredictable holdbacks, this time could be shortened to 2,5–2 years, however, it is not very realistic if supreme cartographic quality is to be sought. Whereas the general (A.I–A.IV, A.VI, A.VII) and also largely A.V activities can be fairly planned and managed, successful implementation of A.V.3 – Design of thematic maps, namely A.V.3 a–c, depends on several human factors that have to be taken into account before planning project human resources:

  • Competence of the theme editors and their ability to select and manage the best possible authors for specific thematic fields;
  • Availability of sufficient number of competent map authors or/and consultants from each field;
  • Ability of the individual map authors to work together efficiently and bridge possible gaps between existing scientific viewpoints on some thematic issues;
  • Efficient management considering possibly very large number of involved authors and consultants from different fields, countries and institutions.

6.Conclusions

It is estimated that there will be a considerable increase in the number of regional geographic information strategies being implemented through the world in the next ten years. It will naturally raise interest in synthetic geographic information on the Baltic Sea Region, as on one of the most developed regions in the world. There’s no doubt that such atlas will sooner or later be published, either in solely electronic, or also in printed form. A professionally designed BSR small scale thematic information system should be created and developed in order to prevent less professional attempts. The following principles must be strongly upheld:

  • Geographic integrity of the BSR region;
  • Unity of natural and socio-cultural information; unity of history and geography;
  • Territorial generalization of the accumulated scientific knowledge;
  • Representation of newest trends of development;
  • Good communicative quality;
  • Usability and availability.

The “next thing,” which we see already happening, is the emergence and importance of the Internet in geographic applications and use of GIS by people who do not need to understand the technology or the science.This broadens the user base and deepens the importance of geographic information products. It opens the world to new opportunities, applications, and possibilities. The ABSR in digital form can be easily published in the Internet providing a comprehensive vision of the region.

It is obvious that several companies (specializing in GIS and cartography) and specialists from different countries of the region must work on this project to achieve the best result. There are many of institutions in the Baltic Sea Region countries that alone or collectively have all the prerequisites, including applied sciences’ potential and resources for synthesizing the knowledge from different fields of activity, necessary for successful implementation of the project. Involvement of regional public organizations and support by national governments is crucial for sustainability of the project results. Scientific approach to map design involves modern cartosemiotics and allows expecting the best communicative quality of the product. Detailed project management plan is orientated to quality assurance.

7.References

Maciejewski, Witold (ed.) The BalticSeaRegion: Cultures, Politics, Societies. Uppsala: The BalticUniversity Press, 2002

Internet links (last visited after July 15, 2006)

An Agenda 21 for the Baltic Sea Region:

Baltic Development Forum:

Baltic University Atlas of the Baltic Sea Region:

BalticSea.net (areas of cooperation and cooperative activities in the Baltic Sea Region):

Baltic Sea Region, GIS, Maps and Statistical Database:

Baltic Historical Maps:

Baltic Sea Region INTERREG III B / Community Initiative concerning Transnational Co-operation on Spatial Planning and Regional Development (

EuroGeographics (